Legends: The Folklore Trilogy Book 2

Chapter 17-Where We Debate, Discuss, and Decide

The waves were the only sound, yet they seemed deafening.

"How could we let this happen!" Deynan shouted suddenly. I didn't even jump. "They were fighting those...those THINGS, and what did we do? We had a breakdown."

Isaac and I didn't respond. It was true.

Deynan turned away and looked out at sea.

"What WERE those things, anyways?" Isaac asked quietly.

"I could ask the scroll," I said, my voice dead.

"Ok," Isaac replied, almost inaudible.

I reached under the bench, almost dreamlike. None of this seemed real.

"Hey," I wrote on the scroll, "we were just attacked by octopus-bird-women. It made us feel really bad. What were they and why did they do that?" I shook out my hand. It was the most I had ever written with the quill. I analyzed my handwriting subconsciously. I usually write with no slant and hard pressure. I noticed because I read a book on graphology, and it said that it meant I had strong emotions that I hid very well, preferring to rely on logic, but I could lash out if stress got to me. I had thought it was incorrect until a few days ago, when I broke down over the griffin fiasco. Now I wasn't sure.

My handwriting now was light, shaky, and slanted everywhere, right and left. I wasn't sure what that meant.

"Ravi," Isaac said gently, though his voice was taut, "the scroll."

It had responded. "Oh," I said. I hadn't noticed.

"Really? You got attacked by Tempters? That's rotten luck! Who are you guys and why are you getting attacked by Tempters? As to why they made you feel that way, I can answer that. They attacked your emotional systems, your values, everything that makes you a powerful Legend, and turned it against you. You felt greed instead of charity, laziness instead of diligence, that sort of thing. And I guess you really are powerful, because if you truly felt awful, your body must have rebelled. If you had been normal, you might have transformed into a darke form, or too many, or kept switching and you would've exploded."

I blinked. "Oh."

"What does it say?" Deynan asked, turning around, mildly curious.

I passed it to him wordlessly. He scanned, and I saw his eyes widen. "Oh."

He passed it to Isaac, then slowly lowered his head into his hands and ran them through his hair.

Isaac read it. "Well...that's...good to know?"

"That we're so supposedly powerful their powers didn't work on us? Yeah, real great to know," Deynan said bitterly.

Isaac handed the scroll back to me. "What do I say now?"

Isaac shifted. "Ask how to defeat them."

I nodded. "How do you defeat a Tempter?"

"Well, when it's one on one, they'll be harder, especially now that they know. They'll probe you more subtly and exploit your weaknesses, turning your mind and body against you."

I stared at the parchment. My hands began to shake.

Then another line of writing appeared. "So basically, you're screwed."

I thumped my head into my hands. "Thanks for summing it up, scroll."

Deynan took the paper and read it. His face turned sour. "Fabulous." He handed it to Isaac, who had to read it twice. "Seriously?"

I rolled the parchment up and stuck it under the bench with the quill. We fell silent again.

"What do we do now?" Isaac asked quietly.